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Les Ammonoïdes (Mollusca, Cephalopoda) : avancées et contributions récentes à la paléobiologie évolutive

Pascal NEIGE, Arnaud BRAYARD, Sylvain GERBER & Isabelle ROUGET

fr Comptes Rendus Palevol 8 (2-3) - Pages 167-178

Published on 30 April 2009

This article is a part of the thematic issue Evolutionary history of Life

Ammonoids (Mollusca, Cephalopoda): Recent advances and contributions to evolutionary paleobiology

Ammonoids ruled the seas for 335 Myr and present themselves as an especially suitable model when analyzing biological evolution. This synthetic paper focuses on (1): the phylogenetic place of ammonoids within cephalopods and the choice of an extant reference model; (2): the establishment of phenotypic spaces supplying relevant insights into biological evolution; (3): the concordances and discordances between phylogenetic reconstructions and the fossil record, and (4): the postcrisis recoveries, as models to study large-scale evolution. It appears from these topics that ammonoids can be used as case studies for many themes in Paleontology (biodiversity dynamics, phylogenetics, analysis of the fossil record) that offered and continues to offer a better understanding of evolutionary patterns and processes, especially in the context of large-scale studies.


Keywords:

Evolution, Ammonoid, Morphospace, Allometry, Phylogeny, Fossil record, Crisis and radiation

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